I'm getting closer, but I am afraid that I won't finish Goliath in time! I scored a day off today, and worked on Goliath for most of the day so far. I have 2 fans on him right now trying to aid in the drying time. Once he's fully dry, I can sand him down some and get his head and hair done. I'll probably get his loin cloth done today too. I am getting ready to start on the wings now, but here is the progress so far:
There are only 10 days left until Halloween. Gotta admit, I'm feeling the time crunch now. Goliath is no where near complete, Bird Girl still needs to be painted, and this whole "work" thing is getting in my way!! I did take Sunday off from projects to work in the front yard trimming trees and bushes and stuff, getting it ready for the cemetery to go up next weekend.
I finally got started using the paper clay on Goliath now. I covered his legs, giving him better shape and smoothing out the strips over the duct tape. It'll take a couple of days to dry thoroughly, even though I tried not to make it too thick. I had to make a new page for the progress of this project as the first page is getting really long and I don't want the pages to take forever to load. The link to the second page is on the bottom of Page 1. :-)
If y'all wanna learn how to do some cool stuff, check out Allen Hopps over at Stiltbeast Studios on their Youtube channel! Good stuff, and entertaining! He's got some great videos on how to make cool Halloween props very simply and VERY cost-effectively. Check it out!
Worked on getting that important base layer of strip mache on top of most of the duct tape. Now I can see better what I'm working with and my future mache clay has something better to stick to. Good times!
Got a lot of the "fleshing out" part done, and he has a head now!
Follow the progress here:
http://theghostess.com/goliathV2.htm
So, I mentioned before that I have been spending a lot of time on Pinterest. Well, I've also been spending a fair amount of time on other sites too -- ya know, for research purposes -- and I stumbled on to the Wicked Makers channel on YouTube while perusing some glowing embers tutorials. Jaimie and Jay have some pretty cool projects, both for Halloween and non-Halloween things, and they make their videos fun and entertaining. Y'all check 'em out!
So, work for my husband has gotten in the way of my duct taping a copy of the rest of him so I can get rolling on Goliath V.2, plus I lost a day to cooking and cleaning for Tom's birthday, and I have been a little under the weather, but I have managed to get 3 coats of mud on Bird Girl and am now ready to sand most of her. I still have some spots to add mud where I was holding on to her to keep her from falling over while I spread the mud on her. I have tomorrow off from work, so I'll be trying to get some good progress going on that. I have house projects that I'm also trying to work on at the same time, so I get distracted a lot from the Halloween goodness.
Speaking of distractions.... I have wasted so much time looking at Pinterest lately! I have so many new ideas floating through my brain, and it's not helping me focus at all. Most of my website traffic these days comes from Pinterest, so now I feel obligated to check it out. There's an article on FabartDIY.org that I get a lot of visitors from for my Grim statue. I also started a hubpages account, and have published my first article! I got a notification today that it's been featured and selected for a Hubpages Network site, so that's cool. I love to write, but I always find it hard to come up with a good topic, so tutorials will be my main go-to there I think.
Time to get some work done on Bird Girl. Hope y'all are having fun with your projects, haunts, and decorating!
So, some of you may know of my Goliath prop that I made back in 2005. He was pretty impressive, took me 17 days to make, and was my first papier mache prop. Goliath is a gargoyle, the leader of the gargoyles, from the animated Disney series, "Gargoyles", from the mid '90s. I watched it with my son, who was a little guy back then, and I loved it. I had inspiration from another haunter's gargoyle prop, and decided I needed a life-sized Goliath for my display. He was a lot of fun to make, and I will admit, I was quite obsessed about working on him. I worked day and night, every second I could. My house was a wreck, my kids ate a lot of take out, and I got very little sleep. I didn't want to go out, and I almost took him with me when my tenant at the time forced me to go to a poker night at some friends' house. I do not play poker, so I don't know why I had to go! I had to work on Goliath!!! Anyway....
We had a LOT of continuous rain and gusty winds in 2007, thanks to our tropical weather here in sunny Florida, and Goliath was one of the casualties of that deluge of the wet stuff. He was so badly damaged that I had to make the hard decision to let him go. It was heartbreaking. There has been a huge hole in my display that nothing has been able to fill since his departure.
But now, I am going to rebuild him. My husband graciously agreed to be my model for the duct tape dummy for his body, which is great, because my husband is a big guy and perfect for this project's beginning stage. Tonight, I taped his top half, but I ran out of tape, so tomorrow I will pick up more tape and finish the bottom half and get started on creating a better, stronger version of my beloved Goliath. I have learned a lot about papier mache in the past 15 years, so the process should be easier for me.
Wish me luck!
